Analysis Of Laura Esquirel's Like Water For Chocolate

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquirel, follows the life of a group of sisters as they try to live under the control of their authoritative mother, Mama Elena. The story is told through recipes created by the youngest sister, Tita. As the story unravels, there is a theme of lost, love, bondage, and freedom. Throughout the course of each sister’s life, at least one of the aforementioned themes play out in their life. It is a story that contains deep pain and loss due to an evident cultural oppression perpetuated unto each of their lives by their authoritarian mother. This cultural oppression is due to the deeply established ideologies of the importance of being a righteous women. This effect caused by patriarchy, fueled Mama Elena’s authoritarian

She did not demonstrate the ideal image women were suppose to portray given to us through historical readings. This authoritative character is symbolized when her milk dries up from the shock of her husband dying (Esquirel 6). Throughout the story, the image of breast feeding became a symbol of nourishment, and necessary for forming a loving bond. When Tita’s sister, Rosaura, had her son and could not breastfeed him, Tita took on the job. In the story, the narrator says, “[Tita] did a mother’s work without the official title” (Esquirel 79). This establishes the idea that a mother’s job is to nourish their child. When Roberto, the son of Rosaura had died, it broke Tita. Her bond with Roberto was created by her breastfeeding him. It was as if she were his mother, and he her child. This image of Mama Elena’s breast milk drying up, almost works as a way to show that she could no longer be the mother. With the death of the "man of the ranch," Mama Elena had to take on a new role. Her motherly role as the nourisher died with her husband. Mama Elena was concerned with how her daughters reflected the family name, not in building a loving relationship with them. This perpetuated idea of the importance of being a righteous women, put an enormous amount of pressure on families to withhold this image. This need to be a righteous woman forced these girls to live in a certain mold perpetuated by

When Chancha was returning to her mother, she did not want to tell her how Tita was doing fine without her. She decided to tell her that Tita “promised that as soon as she became an honest woman she would return to be with her mother and give her all the love and respect that Mama Elena deserved” (Esquirel 129). Again, this establishes what it means to be a woman in their culture. A woman had to have “morality, respect, and good behavior” (Esquirel 175), for if she didn’t, she was “worthless… [and] blackened the name of [her] entire family …” (Esquirel 175). This ruled the course of life for the De la Garza sisters. Due to this strong emphasis on being a decent woman (Esquirel 199), what they were allowed to do was limited by the restraints of cultural oppression established by years of